Latest Articles

The world is becoming ever more dangerous. So concluded President Donald J. Trump's most senior intelligence and national security advisers in public testimony Tuesday on Capitol Hill. "The risk of inter-state conflict is higher than any time since the Cold War," Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told senators in his opening statement.

It says much about the state of America that the fatal train derailment in Tacoma, Washington virtually overshadowed the unveiling of President Donald Trump's "America First" national security strategy in Washington, D.C. Trump opened his speech with condolences to the families of the three people killed and dozens wounded in the Amtrak crash. "It is all the more reason why we must first start by repairing the infrastructure of the United States," Trump said, referring to the devastating crash.

Akayed Ullah, the 27-year-old ISIS-inspired immigrant from Bangladesh, was the only person seriously hurt this past Monday, when he detonated his bomb in the crowded underground passageway between the Port Authority bus terminal and the Times Square subway hub. Three bystanders suffered minor injuries.

Why now? That's the question being asked in Arab capitals, at the Vatican, at the United Nations, and even in Washington, after President Donald Trump declared that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv. Calling it "long overdue," Trump described his decision as the fulfillment of a campaign pledge and "nothing more or less than a recognition of reality." Thanking him, Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu agreed: "Jerusalem," he tweeted, "has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years." Israel's Knesset, its parliament, is in West Jerusalem. So are its Supreme Court, its key ministries, and most key official institutions. Trump maintained that the dramatic step, endorsed by Congress in 1995 but consistently avoided by his White House predecessors, would not damage the search for a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or change the status of Jerusalem's geographic and political borders. Those issues would still have to be agreed upon by Israel and the Palestinians, the White House said.

The attack Friday on a Sufi mosque in northern Sinai, in which at least 235 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded, was the worst terrorist attack on civilians in modern Egyptian history. It was well-planned, highly coordinated and aimed at slaughtering as many people as possible.

But it should have been no surprise.

The Egyptian army has been battling ISIS-linked militant Islamists in the Sinai four years with limited success. But if the world knows little about this fierce ongoing struggle, that is no accident. The Egyptian government has imposed an almost total media blackout on its efforts to repress what is becoming a deeply embedded insurgency.